Just another Daily News site

Main menu

Post navigation

HBO Tribute Fit for a King

Amid all the Outfest madness, I also had the immense pleasure of chatting with sports icon Billie Jean King last week, the subject of an absorbing documentary airing throughout the summer on HBO called “Billie Jean King: Portrait of a Pioneer.” This superbly done program gives the great BJK her well-deserved due for all the amazing things she has done and continues to do with her life.

If you want to be inspired to do something with your life, catch this program. You will be in awe of how one person has been able to do so much.

Freshly back from Wimbledon where she was honored along with Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Margaret Court and Maria Bueno as an “extraordinary winners” of the tournament, BJK rang me up from Prescott, Az. where she is spending time with her mother Betty. Her beloved father, Bill, passed away recently, but, thankfully, he is interviewed in the HBO documentary which also features insights from her longtime life partner Ilana Kloss, former rival and still good friend Chris Evert, Navratilova, BJK’s former husband, Larry, her brother Randy Moffit (a former major league baseball player) and superstar Elton John, her great pal who wrote Philadelphia Freedom? for Billie Jean back in the days when she played for the Philadelphia franchise in World Team Tennis. Elton and BJK host a major AIDS fundraiser each year called Smash Hits (more on this in a future posting).

“I’ve watched it once and I thought they did a really good job. They’ve been wanting to do this for about 15 years,” said Billie Jean, winner of a record 20 Wimbledon titles including six in singles. “Everybody they talked to has really had time with me. I’ve seen other shows with people talking about me and I just thought, ‘You don’t even KNOW me!'” On the HBO show, Sports Illustrated veteran scribe Frank Deford says BJK ranks alongside Jackie Robinson as a rare athlete who is a hero of the culture.
“I got chills up and down my spine,” she said of Deford’s remarks. “To be in the same category as Jackie Robinson, I do love it, because I admire him so much.”

Billie Jean, ranked number one in the world five different years in the 60s and 70s and still a Wimbledon semifinalist in the early 80s at 38 and 39 years old, is spending her summer with her mom, promoting her Team Tennis league and working for the Women’s Sports Foundation which she founded.

The famously bespectacled athlete (“I love my glasses, they’re my signature”) successfully fought for equal atheltic funding in schools (Title IX), launched the women’s professional tour and formed its union, and beat Bobby Riggs in the legendary “Battle of the Sexes” match in 1973. So how she became such a pioneer?

“It’s who I am,” she said simply. “Anytime there is an injustice, I want to do whatever I can.”

Some other excerpts from our interview:

On same-sex marriage: “We should have the choice, Im very adamant about it. You want the same legal rights and to announce your love publicly. We absolutely deserve it.”

On former rival Margaret Court: “We get along great every time we see each other at Wimbledon. Shes a reverend now and she thinks I should be saved, that Ive gone down the wrong path.”

On visiting pal Elton John in England: “Hes so cute! I love him! He has no plasma TV, hes got a little TV in the kitchen, 12-15 inches and he sits in a chair like a little schoolboy and watches his football. He stands up and screams. Hes a riot. Hes in a good mood again.”